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CHAPTER V
I HAD shut the door to. Then I turned around. and
there he was. I used to be scared of him all the
time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was scared
now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken --
that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when
my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected;
but right away after I see I warn't scared of him
worth bothring about.
He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was
long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you
could see his eyes shining through like he was
behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his
long, mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no color in
his face, where his face showed; it was white; not
like another man's white, but a white to make a body
sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl -- a
tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his
clothes -- just rags, that was all. He had one ankle
resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was
busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he
worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the
floor -- an old black slouch with the top caved in,
like a lid.
I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at
me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the
candle down. I noticed the window was up; so he had
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clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over.
By and by he says:
"Starchy clothes -- very. You think you're a good
deal of a big-bug, don't you?"
"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.
"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he.
"You've put on considerable many frills since I been
away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done
with you. You're educated, too, they say -- can read
and write. You think you're better'n your father,
now, don't you, because he can't? I'll take it out
of you. Who told you you might meddle with such
hifalut'n foolishness, hey? -- who told you you
could?"
"The widow. She told me."
"The widow, hey? -- and who told the widow she could
put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of
her business?"
"Nobody never told her."
"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here
-- you drop that school, you hear? I'll learn people
to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father
and let on to be better'n what he is. You lemme
catch you fooling around that school again, you
hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't
write, nuther, before she died. None of the family
couldn't before they died. I can't; and here you're
a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to
stand it -- you hear? Say, lemme hear you read."
I took up a book and begun something about General
Washington and the wars. When I'd read about a half
a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand
and knocked it across the house. He says:
"It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when
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you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting
on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my
smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll
tan you good. First you know you'll get religion,
too. I never see such a son.
He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some
cows and a boy, and says:
"What's this?"
"It's something they give me for learning my lessons
good."
He tore it up, and says:
"I'll give you something better -- I'll give you a
cowhide.
He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and
then he says:
"Ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed; and
bedclothes; and a look'n'-glass; and a piece of
carpet on the floor -- and your own father got to
sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such
a son. I bet I'll take some o' these frills out o'
you before I'm done with you. Why, there ain't no
end to your airs -- they say you're rich. Hey? --
how's that?"
"They lie -- that's how."
"Looky here -- mind how you talk to me; I'm
a-standing about all I can stand now -- so don't
gimme no sass. I've been in town two days, and I
hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. I
heard about it away down the river, too. That's why
I come. You git me that money to-morrow -- I want
it."
"I hain't got no money."
"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I
want it."
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"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge
Thatcher; he'll tell you the same."
"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle,
too, or I'll know the reason why. Say, how much you
got in your pocket? I want it."
"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to -- "
"It don't make no difference what you want it for --
you just shell it out."
He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and
then he said he was going down town to get some
whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. When he
had got out on the shed he put his head in again,
and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be
better than him; and when I reckoned he was gone he
come back and put his head in again, and told me to
mind about that school, because he was going to lay
for me and lick me if I didn't drop that.
Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge
Thatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make
him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he
swore he'd make the law force him.
The judge and the widow went to law to get the court
to take me away from him and let one of them be my
guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come,
and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts
mustn't interfere and separate families if they
could help it; said he'd druther not take a child
away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the
widow had to quit on the business.
That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He
said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I
didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three
dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
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drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and
whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over
town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they
jailed him, and next day they had him before court,
and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was
satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd
make it warm for him.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to
make a man of him. So he took him to his own house,
and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to
breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and
was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after
supper he talked to him about temperance and such
things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a
fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was
a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody
wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would
help him and not look down on him. The judge said he
could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his
wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that
had always been misunderstood before, and the judge
said he believed it. The old man said that what a
man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge
said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was
bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand,
and says:
"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold
of it; shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of
a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a
man that's started in on a new life, and'll die
before he'll go back. You mark them words -- don't
forget I said them. It's a clean hand now; shake it
-- don't be afeard."
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So they shook it, one after the other, all around,
and cried. The judge's wife she kissed it. Then the
old man he signed a pledge -- made his mark. The
judge said it was the holiest time on record, or
something like that. Then they tucked the old man
into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and
in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and
clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a
stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of
forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old
time; and towards daylight he crawled out again,
drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and
broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze
to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And
when they come to look at that spare room they had
to take soundings before they could navigate it.
The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned
a body could reform the old man with a shotgun,
maybe, but he didn't know no other way.
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